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UFT Leader: Adams Shares Union's Concerns About DOE Bureaucracy

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The morning after the United Federation of Teachers Delegate Assembly delivered its mayoral endorsement to Eric Adams—who four months earlier had been one of two candidates the union advised its members to shun in the Democratic primaryMichael Mulgrew said there had been no awkward conversation with the Brooklyn Borough President after he gained the party's nomination in early summer.

"I talked with Eric about it at the time," he said during an Oct. 14 phone interview. "You're in a primary and you're in it to win it," which was why he chose the unorthodox strategy that didn't work as planned.

Hope Lingered for Stringer

The UFT had the bad luck of giving its endorsement to Scott Stringer in early April, just before allegations by a former campaign aide that he had sexually harassed her 20 years ago led the City Comptroller's progressive supporters, from the Working Families Party to more than a dozen elected officials, to swiftly withdraw their backing.


 A few of our stories and columns are now in front of the paywall. We at The Chief-Leader remain committed to independent reporting on labor and civil service. It's been our mission since 1897. You can have a hand in ensuring that our reporting remains relevant in the decades to come. Consider supporting The Chief, which you can do for as little as $2.25 a month.

The momentum his campaign had been gaining evaporated, and Mr. Stringer wound up fifth in the primary, while the two other candidates the UFT suggested its members should list beneath him on their ballots while avoiding Mr. Adams and Andrew Yangex-Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia and former Counsel to Mayor de Blasio Maya Wileyfinished second and third.

But at the time Mr. Mulgrew issued his June 1 directive to members to leave Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang off their ballots because they favored an expansion of charter schools in the city, he said polling showed Mr. Stringer "had started moving up. He was polling No. 1 for everyone's second choice." The city was using ranked-choice voting for the first time in a mayoral election, and Mr. Mulgrew hoped enough of his rank and file would leave Mr. Adamswho had just displaced longtime leader Mr. Yang as the front-runner in the pollsvulnerable in the later rounds of the process to the Comptroller as candidates were eliminated and their votes shifted to those who were second or third on their ballots.

Shifting Gears

His past relationship with Mr. Adams, which Mr. Mulgrew said dated back to when the UFT helped briefly give Democrats the majority in the State Senate for two years beginning in 2009the year he became president of the unionand the then-State Senator from Brooklyn was part of the leadership, helped smooth over his being ostracized during the primary.

It would have been untenable for the UFT to give its backing to a pro-charter-expansion candidate in a primary whether several others who were running embraced the UFT's opposing stance, Mr. Mulgrew indicated, explaining, "That's a third rail for us. [Members] were greatly concerned about it."

But, he added, "Thankfully it wasn't really that hard at the Delegate Assembly" to convince delegates that backing Mr. Adams against Curtis Sliwaa longtime critic of the UFT who also supports a charter expansion in the citywas the right move. "We have to work with the Mayor no matter who it is. Our Delegate Assembly is pretty knowledgeable on politics and strategy."

He also understands the Democratic nominee's rationale for supporting a charter expansion: some charter schools in the city's poorest neighborhoods, where the students are predominantly black and brown, have significantly outperformed traditional public schools.

'We're Just as Frustrated'

"I understand Eric's frustration," Mr. Mulgrew said. "Our people working in these schools ask: why is it so hard for us to get what's needed?"

He believes the answer lies within the school bureaucracy, saying, "The Department of Education is not serving our school system."

He said that eight years ago, shortly before Mayor de Blasio took office, he advised him that once he got funding to expand pre-kindergarten classes to all 4-year-olds and set up the program, he should turn his attention to breaking up the bureaucracy.

Asked whether part of the problem was that the Mayor's first Chancellor, Carmen Farina, had to be coaxed from retirement and was viewed more as a caretaker, and the second one, Richard Carranza, was an ideologue rather than a strong manager, Mr. Mulgrew said of Mr. de Blasio, "It was more about him not having his eye on the ball. The bureaucracy is going to protect itself, and it takes somebody who stays really focused."

He continued, "That's where Eric always scored the highest" in conversations with UFT officials.

Decries Lack of Funding

A prime reason for the lack of improvement of struggling schools in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods, Mr. Mulgrew said, was "those schools were never getting enough programs" because the bureaucracy was most-responsive to districts where elected officials were "aligned" with whoever was Mayor or parent groups were politically engaged. After years of tilting with the bureaucracy, he said, "I gave up: 'I'm not asking for your help, just don't bother us.'"

That led to "The Bronx Plan," a key element of the union's 2018 contract deal that required an infusion of resources and experienced Teachers into the city's struggling schools, many of them based within that borough. 

As Mr. Mulgrew put it, "The UFT had to put into its contract that you have to stop ignoring or abusing these schools." The program was due to be expanded last year, he added, but "the pandemic put an end to [that growth]."

More recently, he was exasperated by Mr. de Blasio's reaction after the UFT testified a week earlier that somewhere between 150,000 and 180,000 students were not showing up for in-person classeshis big initiative at a time when other cities were taking a more-cautious approach to fully reopening their schools.

'Going to Harass You'

"City Hall goes berserk," the UFT leader said. "They don't dispute it," but DOE issued an edict to the schools that he characterized as, "We're going to harass you until you find these children."

He has been encouraged by conversations he's had with Mr. Adams in which, notwithstanding his praise for charter schools, "He says that first and foremost he knows that the way to solve our problem is to have a strong public-school system."   

He also thinks the man most likely to become Mayor Jan. 1 has a better plan than Mr. de Blasio's Oct. 8 announcement that he was phasing out the city's Gifted and Talented program.

Mr. Mulgrew said the UFT agreed with the Mayor that "Gifted and talented should not start in kindergarten. But get rid of it? We absolutely disagree with that."

Critics of the plan have said that Mr. de Blasio's idea for an alternative program that would also admit students who showed interest and ability in areas like robotics and community advocacy would water down the curriculum and become one more reason that parents would want to move high-achieving children to private schools or charters.

'Will Hold Them Back'

The basic curriculum, Mr. Mulgrew said, requires students taking math to know five concepts by October and then hone their proficiency in those areas over the rest of the school year. He called that objective "the last thing you should do" in cases where students were gifted enough to master eight concepts in a subject over the course of the year.

"You'll be holding children back," he said. "The goal [of that approach] is to make kids proficient; if you're gifted and talented, you're already beyond proficient."

He also rejected the policy first adopted during Michael Bloomberg's tenure as Mayor that did away with gifted-and-talented classes in struggling schools based on the notion that those were the places where the entire focus should be on basic proficiency. Mr. Adams has said that as Mayor, rather than scale back the gifted-and-talented program because critics claim it's elitist, he would expand it to all city schools. That, he contended, would get more children of color into classes that would ultimately improve their numbers in the city's best high schools, including the ones for which passing a specialized exam is required.

Mr. Mulgrew agreed with the idea, saying, "Every Teacher knows that there are children in their building who are learning at an accelerated rate, and it doesn't matter what background they came from."


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